1. The Field of the Invention The present invention is directed generally to physical task status indicators and checklists, and more particularly, to a checklist comprising slider type task status indicators used in generally sanitary environments such as hospitals, surgical rooms, patient care facilities, and the like.
2. Background Art
Briefly, there are many devices known in the art for indicating the status of a task. Typically, they are used to indicate whether it has been completed or remains pending. Prior art checklists comprise a panel on which indicators are positioned alongside wording corresponding to the indicators. Most indicators have elongated slots along which tabs are manually slid when the status has changed. As such, dust, soil or other debris tends to collect within the open slots. The sliding movement of the tabs further causes debris to be permanently etched into contact surfaces between the tabs and the slots making the indicators even more difficult to clean. As such, these devices do not adequately meet the needs of the medical community working in sterile environments. It is imperative in a clean environment, such as that of a hospital or an operating room, that a task status indicator be clean, easy to clean and easily maintained.
In use, a task status indicator is used to indicate whether a task has been completed. There are typically two possible states (e.g., done or not done) from which a state is chosen to indicate the status of a task. A physical task status indicator, such as one proposed by the Applicant herein, is often used as a redundant but rapid source of indication of a series of procedures being carried out over a period of time. In addition to indicating status physically on a board, record is typically kept electronically or on paper as a backup measure or for other medical or safety audit purposes. A physical status indicator is a rapid way to communicate status without requiring steps associated with checking a paper or electronic record.
A prior art medical status checklist commonly used in hospitals comprises a board on which indicators are affixed. Due to material and installation costs, most boards are made of commonly available polymeric materials such as plastic. The means by which the indicators are affixed are not robust and therefore can cause indicators to deteriorate, become brittle and fail only after very limited number of indicator actuations. Such indicators are typically glued, taped or solvent bonded onto a board. As a board bends due to improper mounting on a wall, such attachment of indicators tends to cause indicators to detach and eventually fall off from the board surface. Since boards are typically constructed from thin plastic, when indicators are secured to boards by screws, there tends to be cracking at the attachment points of the indicators to the board due to the brittle nature of the thin board.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,343,294 discloses a device used in aiding an aircraft pilot in take-off and landing procedures. This device comprises a plurality of slots and tabs, each tab disposed within a slot and configured to be slideable along the slot, leaving space within the slot to collect debris. Although such a slide can function as an indicator, the ease with which the slots collect debris and the difficulty in removing debris collected in the slots make this type of task status indicator unsuitable to meet the requirements of a clean environment. In a hospital or operating room setting, personnel using such a task status indicator often have soiled hands introducing the risk of contagion or transfer of infectious diseases by contact. After each series of tasks has been completed or each shift, task status indicators are often sanitized by being sprayed with anti-microbial solutions and wiped down. Cleaning task status indicators having slots would be time-consuming and impractical since the debris would have entered the surfaces which provide sliding relationship between the tabs and the slots. Cleaning solution may also enter the interface between the insert member and the mounting panel secured with tongue and groove relationship if the transverse webs are narrow. The prior art device is constructed from multiple layers of materials, i.e., the top cover, cover plate and mounting panel, making it economically unfeasible for many applications.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,703,712 discloses yet another slider type mechanism for indicating one of a plurality of selective positions. The slider type mechanism comprises a frame with an elongated slot along which a slide is configured to be slideable and a base plate on which distinctively colored areas are disposed. Each slider type mechanism is secured via a double adhesive strip to a surface. This is an example of a temporary indicator since each slider mechanism is not integrally formed or securely affixed to a panel to withstand repeated use due to a poor bond between a slider mechanism and flexing of the double adhesive strip when stressed. This prior art device also comprises an exposed elongated slot on which debris can easily collect and not conducive to rapid wipe down.
In addition, there have been attempts to produce task checklists which use an elongated frame area which groups all pre-made indicators on one column of a panel together. Adjacent this frame to the left or right are indicia, such as lettering, which are designed to correspond to the indicators. However, in many cases, an indicium encompasses multiple lines of lettering or indicators. In such cases, excess indicators will be blocked or disabled, leaving only a first indicator to correspond to the indicium to indicate the status of the task. Such a checklist fails to correlate clearly indicia with their corresponding indicators which in turn can lead to misinterpretation of the task statuses.
Today, dry erase boards have been adopted in many applications including its use as task status indicators. Such use in the medical industry may be fraught with errors since the marks left on a dry erase board are easily erasable. In use, tasks are simply written on the board or written on labels which are then adhered to a dry erase board and an area adjacent each of the tasks is provided such that a status indication can be written with a dry erase marker. Statusing a task related to a medical procedure or routine this way does not convey the seriousness of a task nor does it guard against accidental or intentional erasure.
In view of the foregoing drawbacks, there exists a need for a durable, simple, economical physical status checklist that can be used to clearly indicate and communicate the status of a series of procedures that is hygienic and can be easily cleaned and that can withstand repeated use without fail.